5 reasons to meditate with your child

Can you really practice meditation with your child?

Children are most of the times in the present moment, so they naturally experience mindfulness. Actually that’s the reason why they can be taught easily to meditate. Because as we grow up our minds get full of thoughts, tend to wander all the time, and that’s the reason why we think that we need to learn how to meditate. Many people think that meditation is something complicated, something unachievable, something that can only be achieved by years of practice. But I don’t agree with this idea. I believe that all of us can meditate, all of us are able to practice it right here, right now 😉 And it’s not different with children. They can also practice meditation easily.

I brought you 5 reasons to urge you to build meditation into your day-to-day life. These reasons are not scientific proven, these reasons are “only” proofs for us, these reasons are the benefits that we could experience with my children in the last 3 years. Because we started to meditate back then. Actually I started to meditate about 5 years ago, but I started to practice meditation with my kids in the summer of 2015. So I guess I can say that we have quite a long-term experience.

Reason #1

Meditation can help your child release stress and anxiety

Well that was the number one reason why we started to meditate. When my oldest son started elementary school, he was very-very anxious. He wanted to meet all the requirements, all the demands. I remember, many times at almost 9:00 PM, while he was already in bed, trying to fall asleep, he said: ‘Mom, I’m not sure if I had to learn something or not’… And I told him: ‘I don’t care if you had to learn that or not, but now you need to sleep’. It was so hard to see and experience how anxious he was because of school. I really wanted to help him. I didn’t want him to be so worried and nervous about those stuffs. Some people encouraged me to be glad about it, how great he was doing in school, and how great grades he did have. And yes of course that made me proud, but I said, that I’d rather want him to bring worse grades, but be less anxious. It was really-really hard to see that. But as we started to meditate, he started to release anxiety. He started to become calmer. He started to worry less and less. And well I don’t say that today he is not anxious anymore, or doesn’t worry about school stuffs, but much less than before.

Reason #2

Meditation can give children the power to control their life

If you start a meditation practice with your child, you’ll teach your kid how to control his/her life. You can tell you child (depending on how old is your kid) that he/she creates his/her reality. And you can teach your child to visualize things that he/she wants to achieve. You can try manifesting meditations, like the 6th meditation script, titled The secret of the Star Hill in my ebook. And this is something I really appreciate. This is something that I’m so grateful, that my children know that they create their reality. They know, that they shouldn’t blame anyone for anything. They know that they create their life, they know that yes, granted sometimes bad things happen, but they all happen for a reason, even if we don’t know the reason behind them. So they don’t want to point fingers on others, but they take the responsibility.

And again I’d like to tell you some examples of this. How my sons use meditation to create their reality. My middle-son usually asks Master-Med to help him write his tests well. Or he sometimes asks Master-Med to help him find certain things. And actually most of the times Master-Med helps.

My oldest one does the same, but this year he added some more requests. He started to ask the teachers in his Magical nest to give less homework. And guess what happened? Yes he started to learn less. I didn’t want to believe that. My middle-son, Mate always tells to my oldest one, Kristof that this is not fair, that Kristof is in 5th grade and learn less than me, who is in 2nd grade. He should learn more, he says. And so what does Kristof answer? He says that you should also ask your teachers to give less homework. And sometimes Mate also tried it, and yes, it did work. He got less homework. But I guess he doesn’t do it on a day-to-day basis because he’s a bit lazier to meditate, to tell the truth he doesn’t meditate as many times as Kristof.

Actually I was wondering many times, if that is really true. I mean that kristof gets less homework, or that he believes it that he gets less, and so he can learn faster. I don’t know. Really… I only know that he learned much more in the beginning of the year, and when he started to send messages to his teacher, then he started to learn less and less. So there must be correlation…

Another interesting example of this that when he didn’t want to write a test, because he wasn’t sure if he knew it or not, he sent message to his teacher while meditating, and guess what happened? Yes, they postponed the test to another day. And you know you could say that this is just a coincidence, but when it happens regularly, I meant his year, there were at least 7 tests, that he asked not to write, and they didn’t, then you say, that it might not be a coincidence. Actually whenever he asked for it, he got it… So you know children can use their power a lot easier than us, because they don’t have so many limiting beliefs. And actually they won’t have so many if we teach them to use their power 🙂

Reason #3

Meditation can help your child control the emotions

Yes, this is again a great benefit of practicing meditation regularly. I do experience this benefit on a day-to-day basis. I wrote a post in which I wrote a list how I benefited from practicing meditation. I wrote there that I was quite hot-tempered, but today I wouldn’t say I am. I learned to manage my emotions, I learned to respond to my emotions, instead of reacting my emotions. And this is the same especially to 2 of my sons. The oldest one and the youngest one. My middle-son is like his dad, he doesn’t need to learn this, he and his dad is quite good at managing their emotions. Well they would rather need to learn the opposite, how not to suppress their emotions. And I do believe that they improve in this area either.

But Kristof (oldest one), Daniel (youngest one) and me are a bit different. Our emotions are quite intense, and we wouldn’t suppress them, we like to let them out. But we improved a lot how to let them out. Because while in the past I shouted with them to release tension, today, I try to think before I act, I try to pay attention to my breathing before I shout. And again, I’m not perfect it doesn’t always work, but I improved much in the last 5 years.

My oldest son’s ability to control his emotions

And the same is true for my oldest son. He was very hot-tempered, he threw tantrums, he got angry easily. But his behavior with others was completely different. He behaved well in school, or when we weren’t at home. And I remember, if someone told me how smart and good boy he is, I always told that: ‘yes, here he is, but not at home.’ And I can recall the moment about two years ago, when I started to contemplate about why do I say this? Because bear in mind that I always answered this to others. And then I really started to think about it… Why do I say it? I don’t have problem with him. He behaves well at home either. Why do I say that it’s hard with him at home. And then I got it. I realized, that it was just in the past. We changed. He and me either. We’ve learned to control our emotions since then. it doesn’t mean that we don have any argument. Of course we do. But most of the times, we have mindful argument, like this. So we don’t stuck in the argument, we can easily get out of it. And I truly believe that this is a “side effect” of practicing meditation regularly (both me and my oldest son)….

My youngest son’s ability to control his emotions

My youngest son, Daniel is 3 and a half year old. So I wouldn’t say that he doesn’t throw a tantrum now and then. But many times we can prevent it, many times we can minimize the intensity of the tantrum. Usually with mindful methods, like focusing on his breathing. Recently we discovered a great method with one of my friends, and I like to use that nowadays. It does help a lot. I’ll share it with you in my next post, because this post seems to be quite long now 🙂 But the point is, that I can see and experience how practicing mindfulness/meditation (I believe it goes hand in hand) helps my son calm down.

Reason #4

Meditation can help your child relieve pain

My middle-son has headache sometimes (which is I guess in connection with suppressing his emotions). And there are some cases when he meditates and the pain disappears. And I don’t say that meditation always helps, but many times it does. So it’s worth giving it a try.

My oldest son used to have a “habit” to say that he felt very bad, his stomach hurt, but only at bedtime. And he didn’t just say that, he really felt that. But his doctor said, that if it’s always at bedtime, then it’s psychic. So we started to meditate on that problem. And after 2 or 3 weeks (I can’t remember exactly) he didn’t tell it anymore. The symptom disappeared completely.

Reason #5

Meditation can help your child increase self-acceptance and also can help your child accept other children

Well I can’t really tell you that this is the consequence of the way we live our lives (“in a mindful way”), or the consequence of meditation, or the consequence of both, I really don’t know it for sure. But as I mentioned before, mindfulness and meditation goes hand in hand in my reality, so I truly believe that it should be in connection somehow with meditation either. So my children accept themselves the way they are. And because they accept themselves the way they are, they do accept others the way they are. So if they are teased or hurt by someone, yes they might be sad a bit or frustrated, but then they can forgive quite easily. They can accept the fact that those children also have problems, and they don’t hurt them because they want to hurt them, but they just hurt them, because of the frustrations that they feel inside.

If they feel very sad or frustrated about these things, so if it’s a bigger issue for them, then we usually send love and blessing in meditation to those who hurt them. And after that those children who hurt them, usually would apologize, or just simply wouldn’t hurt them for a while.

Reason #6

Meditating together with your child can help you to get to know your child even more

No matter how you choose to meditate together with your child, I’m sure it will help you to get to know him/her more. You can ask questions after the meditation, you can ask how he/she felt during meditation, you can ask about his/her thought, or emotions. When I wrote my meditation scripts, I always wrote questions to the scripts as well. I always asked my children those certain questions. And there were some cases when I got to know quite interesting things about them 🙂

If I convinced you,

If I convinced you, and you got enthusiastic about practicing meditation with your child, but yet you don’t know how to start it, I’d like to offer my ‘pay as much as you want ebook’ for you: Magical nest – Introducing meditation to your child So if you would like to try my scripts, just click on the link above, where you will find further details about the book 🙂

All in all

I don’t say practicing meditation regularly with your child will solve all of your problems, because that wouldn’t be true. Meditation isn’t a magic wand that will solve all kinds of problems immediately. But it really can help your child a lot in dealing with problems in his/her life. So I’d rather say that it’s a tool that can help your child live a balanced, peaceful life. And this is really something powerful that you can give/teach to your child.